The present invention deals with a separating and sorting coin money device, as well as with sorting machines which may also count the coins. These machines have the following essential characteristics:
(1) A separating and sorting device for coin money drawn from a pile of coins to be sorted.
(2) A coin shifting device for the thus separated and sorted coins towards the next station with a speed increase for the coins.
(3) A coin sorting and removing device which usually brings the coins to distinct receptacles according to each coin type.
A rotating turntable is known and used for coin separation and sorting which provides a circular track having an outer fixed crown on which the coins rest and roll.
At a specific point of the crown, the so-called "exit-point", there is a notch which enables the coins to be ejected to the next operating station since they no longer have a point of support.
It has been noted that with a turntable such as this, when two coins move more or less together on the track they are both ejected, thus interrupting the strict alignment necessary for an accurate count.
To prevent this, instead of a turntable, it is known to use a dish where the circular track is formed by a lateral wall area and as such is limited from without by the fixed crown or rim and from within by the cavity of the dish.
Any excess number of coins can then fall in the dish before being taken by transfer means to bring the coins individually onto the track at a determined point, called the transfer point.
In other known mechanisms, the fixed crown is concentric with the dish and as a result, the track width is constant at all points, such as the transfer and exit points.
Given the differences between coin diameters to be sorted, the dish mechanism cannot, unfortunately, prevent very small coins progressing side by side from dropping into the dish if the biggest coins are to have a very good seating prior to their passage to the exit point.
To counter this inconvenience, a ramp upstream of the exit point has been used with a starting point tangentially connected to the internal side of the fixed crown, which in turn remains concentric with the track.
This ramp provides a limit for the track such that its width, without being below half the diameter of the biggest coins to be sorted, also is not more than one and a half times the diameter of the smallest coins to be sorted.
This construction is interesting in that the failure to stabilize large diameter coins is thus limited to a small part of the track which is, unfortunately, located near the exit point where the coins should be perfectly placed in order since this is the essential object of the separating and sorting device.
Aside from the disorder it creates in coin sorting, this ramp represents an additional device to be made and attached to the device, which increases costs.
Moreover, in each of these solutions, coins with large diameters with a large overhang over the dish can be struck by coins set in motion by the transfer means and therefore can also be disturbed.
In the separation and sorting devices with a dish, the fixed crown is always concentric; on the other hand, in turntable devices, it is known to place the fixed crown in a somewhat eccentric manner, to give the part of the crown in use a spiral shape in order to gradually guide the coins to another track and/or accelerate their speed.
This does not modify the width of the track in any way since this track is not inwardly limited.